I love cookery books of all sorts (hint, hint to Father Christmas ‘Paul Hollywood’s British Baking’) but I really love old cookery books; old to me in this context can be anything pre 1970’s. The oldest book I have is Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery.
I am using Eliza’s book in my latest novel where the main character is given a copy which belonged to his great-great-grandmother. I was looking through it and came to the beef section. As you might imagine from a book which was first published in 1845 some of the recipes sound very strange to us, using cuts of meat or parts of the animal no longer popular despite the best effort of celebrity chefs to bring them back, heart, marrow, cheek, shin… cheaper and delicious cuts of meat. There are some parts which I can’t imagine ever coming back into the average butcher’s shop… palates? And what is clod? A cut of below the shoulder round the front of the animal as far as I can tell from the illustration. And what are collops? Collops seems to be a mince stew, sometimes quite spiced.
Saunders… Read the recipe and see if you can imagine it!
Spread on the dish in which the saunders are to be served, a layer of smoothly mashed potatoes which have been seasoned with salt and pepper mixed with about an ounce of butter to the pound. on these spread equally and thickly some underdressed beef or mutton, minced and mixed with a little of the gravy that has run from the joint, or with a few spoonfuls of any other; and season it with salt and pepper and a small quantity of nutmeg. Place evenly over this another layer of the potatoes, and send the dish to a very moderate oven for half an hour. A very superior kind of saunders is made by substituting fresh meat for roasted; but this requires to be baked for an hour or more. Sausage meat highly seasoned may be served in this way , instead of beef or mutton.
Lois Elsden 
I’ll take a dollop of collops any old day. I’ll savor it slowly while musing away, about tomorrows blog and what Lois will say.
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I’ll send you a plate of saunders airmail!!!
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I think saunders is what we colonists call shepherds pie. My wife has a layer of mashed potatoes then on top ground beef and mixed vegetables and then another layer of mashed. My dad used canned corned beef for the meat portion. I can’t imagine how the shepherds had the time or the wherewithall to make it out in the fields but I’ll have to Google it and find out.
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I think you’re right – when we make shepherd’s pie we just have the spuds on top. When I was a child the mince was left overs from the Sunday roast with extra carrots and onions and the left over gravy! I think my husband would like the corned beef version… he’s very fond of it! Did your dad do corned beef hash as well with the potatoes and corned beef mixed together?
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No, he did it the way we do shepherds pie. One day I came home from school and he had put the oven on high as he had come late from drinking and the house was on fire. He slept thru the whole ordeal as the firemen rushed all about him putting out the flames. I got the chore of making supper after that. I’ve got to tell you about the chip making machine I got one day. It’s a real scream!
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Good heavens! What a story!…. chip making? Did it peel and chop the spuds and fry them?
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We had a grocery supermarket that gave you stamps every time you made a purchase and you glued them in a book.After so many books you could redeem them for kitchen gadgets. I told my Mom to get the chip maker. You peeled the potatoes and put the whole potatoe in the machine and pulled down the handle and the chips would get cut in a grid and come flying out the other end. I got so engrossed with this that I kept peeling and chipping and peeling and chipping and didn’t notice that i had gone thru 2o lbs of potatoes and both sinks wer full. My poor Mom laughed her head off when she got home. By the way my wife told me to pick up 20 lbs of potatoes with eyes today cause they have to see us thru to the end of the month.
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I love that story, I can just imagine the enthusiastic little kid peeling and chipping!! Were they Green Shield stamps by the way? That’s what we used to get and we got lots of really useful things when we redeemed them… like most families back then we weren’t that well off and anything was a help!
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The store was Loblaws and they were lucky green stamps.The trouble with the chip machine was that all the chips looked the same so I got tired of it and started cutting them by hand again.
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I think it was Tesco’s which did green shield stamps… we had little books to stick them in
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It was a great marketing tool and ensured the customer loyalty. I’m sure it would still work today.
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